Gamesforgirls.com Archives

Garry Chernoff: One $45 domain purchase, one $500,000 domain sale

When I asked Garry Chernoff to share something special about his latest sale of adnet.com for $60K, he told me he purchased the domain from the previous owner for just $1,000.

But if that doesn’t blow your mind, then maybe this piece of news will.

You remember the $500,000 domain sale of gamesforgirls.com reported earlier this year, don’t you?

“Gamesforgirls.com was purchased from a drop catching registrar (Signature Domains) in 2001 for $10. + the $35 reg fee. $45. total,” Garry Chernoff wrote me by email today.

Gamesforgirls.com sold to Turkish casual game producer Gamegos, as I first reported here. The sale is still in the top 5 publicly reported domain sales of 2011, currently tied for the #3 spot puzzle.com.

Who paid $500,000 for Gamesforgirls.com, the top-selling domain so far in 2011?

One thing is for sure: Bill Kara of Hallpass Media didn’t pay $500,000 USD for the casual games domain name, gamesforgirls.com.

While the buyer may not be known as of yet, the seller is. As pointed out by Jamie Zoch over at DotWeekly, what is known, is that the domain name was sold by Garry Chernoff, of NetIncome Ventures Inc, an established domain investment and web development company.

Casual gaming domain sales create buzz

Like the buzz the domain industry had in early 2010 after cookinggames.com sold for $350,000 to Bill Kara, the price paid for gamesforgirls.com in early 2011 is sure to be the topic of many discussions after the owner is revealed.

I contacted Bill Kara, the CEO of Hallpass Media, which operates one of the largest networks in the United States ) including Girlgames.com (a site roughly estimated by Compete to receive nearly 400,000 unique visitors per month), to see if he was the buyer – after speculation by many that he may have purchased the domain despite owning girlgames.com.

And the answer was as I expected: No.

So who paid $500K for gamesforgirls.com?

At the time of this story, the domain name still remains in Sedo’s Domain Transfer Escrow Service according to Whois, so we won’t know anything until the name is in the hands of the new owner.

But you can bet after the new owner or website is revealed, it’ll be reported quickly.

Readers: Who do you think purchased the domain?